I cannot think of a more valuable, summer experience to prepare me for tackling my career goals than this internship. To begin with, it fits perfectly into my undergraduate experience as a public health major. This opportunity has been great because I have been working as part of the teen dating violence prevention program, which focuses on youth education as a prevention method for the public health burden of domestic violence. Having taken about three years worth of public health classes, I know that I believe in youth interventions and the power of education, especially when it comes to domestic violence prevention. Throughout my career as an undergraduate at Tulane, I have realized that I really would like to specialize in domestic violence and work as an attorney in that field. This summer has been great because it has given me a chance to focus on the public health prevention side of the problem, which is where the hope really lies in having a future free of domestic violence in this nation. I have also had the opportunity to design and implement my own research investigation to help my organization gather baseline data in order to make their teen dating violence prevention program stronger. This is great experience because it has helped make me an even more qualified undergraduate, looking to potentially pursue an MPH, because I have real-life experience designing, implementing and analyzing actual data that I have collected. This kind of research is what graduate students usually do, but I have been lucky enough to have the chance to try it out as an undergraduate through this internship. It will also help me complete my senior thesis, which is also a step towards graduation and career preparation.
Another way in which my internship has helped prepare me for my career path is that it has introduced me to all the different legal career pathways that one can take to work on domestic violence cases. For example, there are attorneys that focus on long-term resolution such as child custody and divorce and then attorneys that focus on short-term protection such as restraining orders or protective orders. Then there are also attorneys that work specifically to protect survivors of domestic violence that do not have legal status in this country. This is where I found my ideal job. Now I know that it may be hard or even impossible for me to find a job exactly replicating this position, but if I had the opportunity, I would take it in a heartbeat. Annie is the name of the attorney that does this work and her job is to help victims of domestic violence that are not legal by helping them apply for a U-Visa, which is a visa that they are eligible for as victims of a crime. It is imperative for immigrant victims of domestic violence to obtain a visa because their immigration status is almost always used against them as part of the coercion and manipulation by their abuser. Therefore, getting them started on the process to obtaining a visa makes all of the threats by their abuser of “getting them deported” lose their validity. The reason I am so excited by this job is because it combines my three favorite fields: public health, Spanish and law. I would love to spend part of my career legally fighting to defend the health of my mainly Spanish-speaking clients. What has been so incredible about working at the Family Justice Center is that, since all of the resources are housed in the same location, I have had the opportunity to talk to all the different attorneys about what they do and even help them out with a few tasks. The other interns and I even got the opportunity to go observe one of the attorneys in civil court one day, which was an amazing experience and one that just heightened my desire to do this type of legal work, even though it is extremely taxing in many regards.